about nathaniel lane taylor
A native of New England, I hold a Ph.D. in medieval European history from Harvard University (1995).
For several years I have been researching, teaching and writing about history and genealogy. My interests include medieval kinship consciousness; cultural and legal systems of kinship, inheritance and probate; the evolution of personal names; the history of genealogy as a discipline and literary form; and artistic and diagrammatic representation of families, including heraldry. I have published work on medieval Spain, England, and France, as well as colonial New England, Virginia, and elsewhere in the modern United States. These varied interests are reflected in the page listing my publications and manuscripts. I divide my time among research, writing, editing, and teaching; playing music (until recently I was organist and choir director at a local church); renovating our colonial house in Barrington, Rhode Island; and raising four young children.
Since 2004 I have also undertaken commissioned genealogical research on a selective basis.
In 2011 I was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists, the honorary society of the nation's leading scholarly genealogists.
In 2013 I became an editor of The American Genealogist, the nation's leading independent quarterly genealogical journal.
I can be reached by e-mail at: nltaylor@nltaylor.net.
about this site
This site began in 2004, and has grown to reflect my interests in history and genealogy as well as exploring and presenting specific aspects of my children's ancestry for the benefit of those who might share an interest in these families or in methods of exploration and presentation of family history. In June 2006, the site was brought over from ISP-dependent pages (at earthlink.net) to its new home at nltaylor.net. In addition to my miscellaneous blog, 'a genealogist's sketchbook', current and projected pages of the site can be explored from the sitemap.
The moon man cartoon is drawn on the rear flyleaf to the twelfth-century cartulary of the Portuguese monastery of Lorvão (currently in the Tôrre do Tombo, Lisboa). The flyleaf text (a fragmentary charter) and cartoons on the page appear to date from the twelfth century.
< < < < Click this arm to see the whole leaf.
